Since he was 4 years previous, photographer Claudio Contreras Koob has been obsessive about flamingos: their vibrant pink feathers, horn-like curved beaks, and stylish, poised necks.
Born and raised in Mexico Metropolis, Koob visited the Yucatán Peninsula yearly throughout faculty holidays. His father constructed a home on sand dunes within the port village of Chuburná, between the ocean and wetlands, and collectively they watched flamingo colonies collect within the lagoons and muddy swamps that stretched for miles behind the home.
“It was a really stunning sight once we have been in a position to spot a pink-orange mass of birds within the distance,” says Koob. “That stayed in my reminiscence.”
The Caribbean flamingo lives in salty wetland and coastal waters round Mexico, the US and the Caribbean. Credit score: Claudio Contreras Koob / Nature Image Library
Koob hopes his intimate portraits of the chicken will assist others to “fall in love with flamingos” and encourage them to care concerning the wetlands the place they stay.
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From lab to lens
Koob’s childhood fascination with nature led him to check wildlife biology on the Nationwide Autonomous College of Mexico, the place he took a course in microphotography and found “what the language of pictures might do,” he says.
Combining his passions, Koob targeted on conservation pictures when he left college. He joined the Worldwide League of Conservation Photographers which in 2009, requested him to seize the tagging of flamingo chicks in Yucatán.
“If you happen to disturb one, they begin screaming and flying away, and you’ll trigger a panic. They might depart all of the eggs, and abandon the colony,” says Koob.
Koob spent years gaining the belief of the flamingos in order that he might {photograph} their nesting colonies and younger chicks. Credit score: Claudio Contreras Koob / Nature Image Library
Koob says his “sluggish strategy” to pictures enabled him to collect intimate photographs of the flamingos. He typically wore camouflage, military crawling throughout muddy floor to get near the birds with out scaring them.
On some events, he took a ship into the lagoons earlier than daybreak so the birds could be accustomed to his presence by dawn, and stayed till after dusk. “That’s powerful, with the solar and 40 levels (warmth),” says Koob. “It’s totally consuming for the physique.”
Fairly in pink
In contrast to people, flamingos are properly tailored for his or her excessive setting.
Flamingos use their hooked beaks to feed on shrimp, mollusks and algae which are wealthy in carotenoids, the pigment that offers them their pink coloring. Credit score: Claudio Contreras Koob / Nature Image Library
Their eating regimen contains algae, shrimps and mollusks containing giant quantities of carotenoids — the identical pigments that give fruit and veggies like carrots, pumpkins, and tomatoes their coloring — and that are answerable for the flamingo’s signature hot-pink look, says Koob.
Wetlands underneath menace
Flamingo conservation has been a excessive precedence for Mexico for the reason that Seventies and ’80s, when it established two federal wetland reserves on the Yucatán peninsula, later designated as UNESCO Biosphere Reserves.
As much as 50,000 vacationers come to see the flamingos yearly at Ría Celestún (pictured) — though Koob warns that this might disrupt their consuming habits. Credit score: Claudio Contreras Koob / Nature Image Library
Now, Koob is again in Yucatán, staying in his childhood vacation dwelling in Chuburná, photographing the wetlands. This time, horseshoe crabs are his focus, and he hopes he can proceed to attract extra consideration to the wildlife and communities residing there.
“For most individuals, the wetland is sort of a pungent, darkish, creepy place. But it surely’s stuffed with wonders — and the flamingo is only one of them,” says Koob.
